


an English vice

by dissembler



Category: A Study in Emerald - Neil Gaiman
Genre: Intercrural Sex, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Manhandling, Period Typical Language, Rough Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:53:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27196084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dissembler/pseuds/dissembler
Summary: Through the looking glass, Moran takes what’s offered.
Relationships: Sebastian Moran/Rache
Kudos: 7





	an English vice

Not being an habitué of this sort of place, his guard is up so much that he jerks almost violently when the hand drops onto his shoulder. He bites his lip against the pain of barking his knee against the wood of the table and looks up.

The least person he would expect, albeit also the first, regards him with a sharp smile and, quite unbidden, takes the vacant seat opposite him in the narrow, sticky booth. 

“This wouldn’t be the sort of place I’d picture you patronising, Mister Sebastian,” Sherry Vernet - _Rache_ says, tone lightly mocking on the name. “What brings you?”

Moran ignores the question. This sort of place – as those sensible of the danger of being in such a place will term one – has an obvious, if criminal, draw, and he has no illusions that the criminal in front of him does not know it exactly. Instead he says, “Hardly the place for a respectable actor, either. Mister _Vernet_ ,” he adds pointedly.

“Touché,” Rache admits, and he leans to the side to signal the barman. 

Moran stiffens, tightening his fingers around the cane he remembered to carry with him. The man must know the proprietors, he thinks, and has signalled them to turn me off. He wonders whether a brawl would be wise, and then notes that as his shoulder has healed so much, it would be nice to test it out.

As it is, no rough hands land on him to drag him up and away. Instead a tumbler of amber liquid – whisky, perhaps, but cut with something else – is delivered into the long, thin fingers of Rache and another of the same ale delivered to himself. 

His surprise must show upon his countenance as once again the wretched man’s eyes are alight with mirth. “Were you expecting a mob?” he asks. “You’ve paid for a drink and not caused any trouble, yet. No-one has any interest in making a scene until one is necessary.”

Moran eyes his new ale with suspicion and a somewhat exasperated look mars for a moment Rache’s features. Then, dashed quick, Rache swipes the glass out from before Moran and takes a healthy sip. “To allay your fears,” he says, sliding it back, voice half-soothing and half terribly amused still. Moran wants to wipe that cheeriness off his face; no seditionist, no assassin, should smile so.

He does not drink from the new glass but finishes his own, leaning back to observe his companion.

Rache, who was thin before, appears a fraction gaunt now; the effects, doubtless, of months hiding in a rookery and without the fine fare of food provided to successful theatre troupes. He wears a long grey coat over a quite normal, if surprisingly well-kept, jacket. His long legs in dark trousers occasionally brush Moran’s own under the table. For a monster, he is warm-blooded like the rest of us.

Thus observing, Moran knows that he himself is also being observed, pierced by the narrowed grey eyes which now focus on his jacket. 

“You are looking well,” he says, primarily to be a rascal but also to end the heavy, dangerous silence that had fallen between them. 

“And yourself, Major, and yourself,” Rache replies, eyes meeting Moran’s once more. “My felicitations on your recovery. You held your shoulder rather stiffly when we met at the theatre but now I see you have fairly the full movement of it. You must recommend your physician.”

Rattled at the knowledge of his rank, he finds himself reaching to massage the blasted joint but stops his hand in time. The devil before him is truly the very image of his friend but in a glass, darkly with the same stunning intellect merely turned to nefarious deeds. He feels in himself the same sort of pull toward the black twin as he does to the white, and fills with shame at his weakness, his inconstancy. 

“You already have a physician,” Moran channels his discomfort into his voice, gives it a mean spirited edge. “Where is the good doctor?”

Rache’s smile flickers, like an oil lamp suddenly turned down. “Not here,” he says, softly. “Which brings us back around to the first question I asked of you, what has brought you here?”

Moran pushes the full, untouched half-pint away and rises sharply. “What I’ve come for is no matter, I am leaving now.” He leans down to pick up his cane and hat and finds instead Rache’s fingers closing about his wrist. Instinctively, he raises his hand to strike the man, however, Rache withdraws and stands before he is able to.

“Come now, Major,” the cur says, his voice low and almost purring, vaguely hypnotic. “There’s no reason you must leave before you’ve found it.” He slithers out from the table and stands before Moran, tall and arresting, one hand extended.

Moran does not take the hand, but he does not turn to leave, and so Rache leads him up narrow stairs and into a room furnished with only a bed, a single chest of drawers and a table none of which are in the prime of condition, in keeping with the rest of the sordid establishment. 

Rache doffs his coat and jacket, and when he stands in his shirtsleeves, his waistcoat open, he reaches for Moran. He reaches for him shoulder-first and Moran finds himself taking a deep step back. 

“We both know what this place is, Major,” Rache says, matching Moran’s retreat with an advance of his own, his voice again soothing and amused at once. “And you cannot pretend that you were looking for me as it’s been months and your ‘friend’ does not strike me as the sort to send you into the lion's den alone.” He reaches again and Moran, caught off guard by a twinge of longing at the mention of his friend, allows him to make contact, to draw Moran’s own coat off his shoulders and toss it with expert aim to join his own over the table. Then his fingers – long, thin fingers, so like his friend’s – tangle with Moran’s and attempt to divest him of the cane and hat he has been clutching.

He holds on, torn. This is dangerous, just to be alone with another man in this sort of place is criminal, from here it would be easy for anyone to have them both up on charges of conspiracy to commit… he can hardly bring himself even to think the word. But Moran has spent the better part of a year half-starved with the need of the promised act with the white twin, the white twin with whom he shares something he cannot let this morbidity, this criminal morbidity tarnish. In thinking of it as inoculation, as tiding, he can allow himself to let Rache take the cane from him, reasoning also that if events proceed along avenues that he is uncomfortable with he will be more than able to overpower a man so thin and beat a hasty retreat.

Rache does not throw the hat and cane; instead he walks over to set them down upon the table and returns with his fingers at his own throat, loosening his tie. He casts that off carelessly onto the floor and then starts for Moran. Again, he takes an instinctive step away but this time finds his back against the wall. He doesn’t move more, not to dash to the side nor to remove any of his own clothing, and so Rache steps into him to make short work of his tie and jacket, then spreads his hands about Moran’s broad, solid chest.

“Do you intend to remain mute and still, Major?” Rache asks, and his voice – different, wrong – breaks the spell that had been growing in power over Moran. “Or do you intend to surprise me with the action of your strength when I least expect it?” His stand is hard and obvious, pressing against Moran’s own. That touch, that brand of heat like iron, inspires a rise of anger in him as much as the smile does.

Moran’s hands shoot up, he grasps the blighter by his narrow shoulders and swaps their positions, and though the man must have been expecting that very response, his eyes still flare with momentary shock. 

“Shut your mouth,” he hisses and snatches at the buttons of Rache’s shirt, opening down and tugging it clean-white and well starched out of his trousers. Next, he pushes the waistcoat off, then the braces and shirt and finds himself having to rethink his earlier assumption on how easy the man would be to overpower. Rache is built like one of those smaller boxing men, those whose lean frames belie the punch they can achieve. Should whatever happens here come to blows in the end, they will both get hits in.

Resigned to missing the mark of what he truly wants but desperate still to chase at least a shoddy relief, Moran grasps the now loose braces where they hang about sharp hips and uses them to pull Rache around before he shoves him roughly towards the bed. 

Still smiling – damn him – despite the mistreatment, Rache goes where he’s bid and Moran follows, pushing him down and clambering atop him, keeping him in place with the advantage of sheer weight and bulk. 

Furious now, at himself and at this pale imitation, this poor substitute, Moran quickly opens enough buttons to bring forth both their rigid pricks and takes a fast hold. Beneath him, Rache jerks at the contact, his pale chest, already shining slightly with effort, moving with a sharp inhale. And, Moran notes with no little satisfaction, he is no longer smiling.

Rubbing their cockstands together, Moran feels Rache’s hands sliding down, past the site of activity, to undo the rest of his own buttons and push the trousers down as far as he can, pinned as he is. After a half-second of sluggish delay, Moran understands the intention.

He kneels back, allowing Rache to wriggle into place below, and spits into his hand to wet his stand as befits the act to be done. Then he bears down again, pressing his prick between Rache’s thin thighs. Once there, the man tightens his legs together, creating a vice-like grip and almost unbearable friction, and Moran begins to thrust there, back and forth. 

“Is this how you polluted him, your military doctor?” he snarls. “Is this how you pulled him into your conspiracy?”

“Horizontally? No, the good doctor is an honourable man.”

Moran snorts, and thrusts viciously. 

In meetings such as this with friendly feeling between the parties, Moran knows that he would be expected to worm his hand between their bellies and frig Rache to completion; he hopes that that is what Rache himself expects, for what he does do is quite different. Thrusting hard into tight heat, he reaches for Rache’s cheek and presses ‘til his face is sideways, until Moran cannot see the features nor hear the voice as both are covered by his hand and in turn the man beneath him can see only the wall, feeling himself be used. 

Rache’s member, untouched, jerks along with the man himself and after a stretching time of Moran’s ceaseless driving betwixt his thighs Rache slides a hand between them to tend to the matter himself. 

Moran feels it by his prick when the man’s bollocks draw up. He increases his pace, racing to a point of crisis which comes shuddering over him as Rache works himself, makes himself gasp and squeeze his legs around Moran so excruciatingly, so gloriously tightly that he fires his shot between them with a furious noise, coating sheet and skin both with his essence.

Moments later Rache brings himself off, spurting white up over his own belly and chest with a bitten off groan into Moran’s fingers still clasped around his mouth. Awakening back to himself, Moran withdraws the rough hand, seeing the bright red mark that he had left over Rache’s high cheekbone when he’d pressed down harder in his paroxysm with a sort of latent horror. He lifts himself briskly up and off, tucks himself away and pulls up his trousers, casting about him for his shirt and waistcoat. Finding them, he puts both on as swiftly as he is able and retreats to the table where his coat, hat, and cane await him and then braves turning back to the bed.

Rache has done nothing to right himself, his legs are as sprawled as is possible with his trousers about his knees and the livid red of his prick is obscene against the pale pink flush of the rest of him. His dark hair is a mess, damp with sweat, and his chest rises and falls as he gets his breath back. He is still magnetic, fine as he is monstrous, this murderous, seditionist man with whom Moran has committed unspeakable deeds and slaked thirsts he dare not mention to the true object of his need. 

“By all means, Major, make your retreat,” Rache says, drawing a fingertip through the mess on his stomach. “You arrived at what you came for, I think. Will you tell him? That friend of yours. Where you were tonight and what you did? Will you tell him why you felt you had to go so very far for it?”

Moran tightens his hand around the head of his cane and imagines striding forward, bludgeoning the sole other witness to his shameful needs. Who would miss him? This creature, the vile, criminal traitor? His doctor might, he thinks, and the thought brings Rache’s own actions tonight into relief. 

“Will _you_?” Moran asks at the door, and leaves quickly before the answer comes. 

He does not slow down until he has marched out of St. Giles and into Piccadilly, where he stands in the comforting red moonlight and hails a cab home to his friend, locking the secret down as they fly across the foggy streets of London.

**Author's Note:**

> I thought I was gonna have some consent issues to tag here but actually, we're pretty okay.
> 
> Title is a pun that only works if you, like I did, conveniently forget that 'the English vice' has like a billion meanings - it works if you think homosexuality and then remember that in Study in Emerald the country is called Albion.


End file.
